Made In Morocco
by ThisIsTrueImmortality
Summary: "I had never seen Carlisle in a teal shirt... In all our years of marriage, one would think the color would have popped into our closet now and then. And the effect was, well...dazzling." Esme POV NOW WITH AN ENCORE! Chapter 2: Sherwin-Williams white.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: As I was typing up this little trifle, a sudden thought hit me-this is the _very first _Esme POV I have _ever_ written. How shocking is that? I think I've done every other Cullen but her, and now she finally gets her own one-shot! *Applause* **

**This story is unique among my current archives because it's the first one to do with that emerald-hued emotion we all know and love. Yes, that's right...Jealousy. Esme gets just a little jealous in this fanfic over the thought of one woman named Sarah...I guess you'll find out how she deals with it!**

**The song for this (fairly short) fanfic: Sharp-dressed Man by ZZ Top (whew, 80's song!) .com/watch?v=Pn2-b_opVTo I just laughed when I heard this song. It seemed appropriate. **

**Enjoy! *Insert dark, Edward-style chuckle***

Made In Morocco - A Twilight One-shot

"Do you like this one, dear?" I held the shirt between my thumbs, offering it up for inspection.

Carlisle sighed. "I will like whatever pleases you, darling."

I translated that sentence in my head: _Can you please just pick the shirts you know we're going to keep and get this over with?_ I smiled to myself. No matter how erudite my husband was in all matters acadamic, Carlisle had never been one for fashion. I recalled a time when he told me he'd been all too happy to throw off eighteen-century clothing in favor of the Volturi's charcoal gray robes. But I didn't allow myself to dwell on the memory; it brought up images of Carlisle throwing off any kind of clothing, and I did have my mind-reading son downstairs to consider...

"Esme?" Carlisle was staring at me, the last shirt I'd persuaded him to try on in his hands. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes, just remembering," I said, returning to my task.

Every three months or so, on the first Saturday of that month, Alice would hand me a monstrous stack of apparel bearing her stamp of approval. This stack typically contained button-down shirts, slacks, and polos perfectly tailored to Carlisle's size. From this stack, Alice would declare, and this stack only, would I be allowed to select outfits for my husband. I could sift through _these _shirts and slacks and pick whichever ones I liked best, and if she ever caught me with _any_ shirts or slacks besides these, there would be dire consequences.

I was always rather hurt by Alice's assumption that I had no eye for men's clothing, but I consented to her wishes. And I also forced Carlisle to consent to her wishes as well. Truth be told, I rarely had to force him to follow our daughter's pharisaical fashion guidlines. Carlisle would wear whatever I handed him-that was the depth of his trust and the shallowness of his interest in clothing. It also helped that Alice bought most of Carlisle's clothes through Free Trade programs. He couldn't complain about replacing his wardrobe every three months when it benefitted a humanitarian effort.

So here we were in our bedroom, and here was the stack scattered about our bed and on the floor, the rejects of the pile already packed neatly into a cardboard box at my feet. Carlisle had already suffered through modeling twenty-eight shirts and fourteen pairs of slacks, six of which we had rejected. He was now sitting cross-legged on what little free space of the bed there was left, wearing only his new pair of deep gray pants. Those I could have mistaken for his old pair, they were so similar. I smiled again with the thought: Alice had undoubtedly seen how fond Carlisle was of those gray slacks and knew to replace them. Then I dropped my eyes quickly to the shirt still in my hands, trying to ignore how beautiful my husband looked _without_ a shirt on. His skin was so perfect...

"Focus," I muttered to myself, low enough that Carlisle wouldn't hear me. Then I held out the shirt again. "Well, what do you think?"

Carlisle pursed his lips, holding back the reply I knew he longed to say. He settled for, "It's very...blue."

I sighed and handed it to him. "It's actually teal. You might as well try it on, Carlisle."

With a martyred expression that nearly made me laugh, he stood in one fluid motion. I watched as he shrugged into the expensive, soft button-down shirt, his grace apparent even in such a mundane action. As his hands flew down the shirt, Carlisle's face turned very serious, as if the shirt's buttons provided a challenge to a skilled vampire surgeon. I stifled another bubble of laughter.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Carlisle, once the buttons were conquered. He stepped sideways and into the light of the overhead bulbs stationed in the ceiling of our room.

I nearly gasped aloud.

Exquisite. That was the only word to describe him.

I had never seen Carlisle in a teal shirt, oddly enough. In all our years of marriage, one would think the color would have popped into our closet now and then, and yet this was the first time I could remember seeing him in such a vivid jewel tone. And the effect was...well, dazzling.

Against such a stark color, Carlisle's pale skin shone pure alabaster, as flawless as an Italian master's finest sculpture. The teal did not wash him out so much as it brought forward his vampire beauty. Where black or navy would make his skin white, this color made it luminescent.

The jewel tone transformed Carlisle's fair hair into shining gold. My eyes traveled from his golden hair to his golden eyes, both rendered beyond description by the teal. His eyes were staring at me, molten and hypnotizing. As my eyes slid over his face to drink in his symmetrical features, I felt venom begin to pool in my mouth.

For a moment I was on the point of a hysterical giggle. I was literally _drooling_ over my husband, and all because of this one teal shirt.

There was no way this shirt was going in the rejection box.

But, then, I was brought quite powerfully back to earth when I considered Carlisle in this shirt at the hospital...around all those nurses. All those very human, very susceptible, very hormonal nurses. Even when he was wearing the most boring, unattractive clothes in the history of mankind (namely, scrubs), I knew women were looking. Of course, I couldn't blame them-Carlisle was so handsome, anyone would be mentally impaired not to notice.

The question was, did I have to encourage their interest by dressing him in _this_ shirt?

I remembered with my impeccable recall the time I had spotted one nurse in the Forks hospital coveting my husband. She had stood across the room from him and followed his every move with her eyes, her gaze alight with indecent attention. I'd felt a snarl building in my throat, which I quickly turned into a cough. Carlisle had seen me then, and his radiant smile for me, and just me, had put the nurse in her place. I had hurried to embrace him and whisper to him what I had planned for our evening together, once he signed out of his shift. Carlisle's arms around me and his gentle kiss on my forehead had certainly wiped that simpering look off of her face.

But _Sarah_-I cringed internally when I thought of her name-was waiting at the Forks hospital. She was waiting expectantly for Carlisle to come back to his shift, and if she ever saw him in this shirt, looking like the angel that I knew him to be...

Such a thought was unacceptable.

I walked from around the bed, pretending to need a better view. Carlisle watched me with his eyebrows raised. Putting a hand to my chin, I tilted my head to the side.

"You know, darling," I said to Carlisle, inserting a due amount of dubiousness in my voice, "I just don't think that's your color."


	2. Encore: SherwinWilliams White

**Author's Note: Here is the encore to Made In Morocco! I got quite a few requests to continue that storyline, so this is my way of answering those requests. It is an Esme POV, and the focus is on jealousy, again, but...there's a twist. :)**

** Please excuse me if there are any major grammar and spelling errors or the story doesn't flow well. I feel very sick right now; my throat is as sore and dry as a newborn's. **

**Song: She Never Lets It Go To Her Heart by Tim McGraw (yes, a country song!) .com/watch?v=5ckcjrDjAI8 It sort of goes with the story, and it's very funny!**

**Enjoy!**

Sherwin-Williams White: A Twilight One-shot

"You look absolutely radiant today."

I smiled, looking up from the row of paint chips I had been examining. "You tell me that almost every day."

Carlisle put his hand over mine and kissed me once on the cheek. "Well, it's true every day."

"Thank you." I pulled my hand out from under his and returned the kiss, then went back to the job at hand. "Now, which color do you like best, dear?" Spreading the six choices out on my hand, I waited for the predictable response.

Carlisle sighed. "Esme, you know I can't tell the difference."

"How can you not?" I demanded, waving the paint chips like a fan. "These are completely different colors!"

"They're all in the same family, aren't they?" asked my husband, eyeing the samples with something bordering on distaste. "They're all white."

"Yes, but look-this one is more of a pink, this one has more blue, and I'm rather fond of this one, the cream-white..." I trailed off at the blank look I was receiving from my listener. "Carlisle, I don't understand how you can spot the tiniest fracture in a person's leg and you can't see the difference in these paint colors."

"That," Carlisle said, laughing, "is completely different."

I laughed, too.

There was a reason why Alice never let Carlisle pick his own clothes. It wasn't so much that my husband _couldn't _distinguish between differing hues of the same color. He was a vampire, after all, and a brilliant one at that. He just didn't _care_ enough to learn the differences. To him, time spent on selecting clothes or paint colors was time wasted.

Which is why we made such a perfect team, I thought, setting down my least favorite sample. "We can rule the egg-shell white out, at least. It wouldn't match with the other parts of the house."

"You do realize you could paint the garage any color you want, my darling? The only one who spends any length of time in there is Rosalie."

"That's why I'm going to make sure it's painted correctly," I said firmly. "As long as any of my children go into the garage to work, I want the walls to be in harmony with the rest of our house."

"I'm seeing...fuschia." Carlisle's eyes were alight with a mischief I knew only too well. It was the mocking-mischief he brought out on special occasions such as this. "Fuschia, or perhaps magenta? I can't decide. Which would be more _in harmony_ with the Volvo and Mercedes?"

I threw him a mock glare, trying pathetically to be intimidating. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not ruining my hard work with those repulsive colors."

"You don't like those choices?" I also knew that wide-eyed innocent look too well, from both Carlisle and Edward. Their shared mannerisms drove me crazy. Sometimes, I didn't know if I was looking at my husband or my son.

"You know very well how much I despise magenta." My wall-color sensibility was taken mostly from Frank Lloyd Wright's law: everything in a house, interior to exterior, must be in unity. Therefore, any color that clashed with white, like magenta, would never flaunt itself on any wall of my house. Carlisle would never understand, I thought in mild despair. "Just let me handle this, my love," I said with conviction, although I knew he was joking.

"I intend to." Carlisle looked curiously around us at the rest of the musty aisle, the first or second in the small local hardware store. "I should find some new drywall anchors for the Solimena," he said, already sliding away down the aisle. "I leave the daunting task of picking which white we should use in your hands, my Esme."

"My hero," I said, waving dismissively at him. "Go on, Carlisle. I'll still be here when you're ready to go."

"It shouldn't take but five minutes."

"That's fine, darling. Go on."I smiled to myself as my husband made his escape.

Carlisle: the awe-inspiring, dauntless, humanitarian surgeon... afraid of a set of paint chips. How droll. I would never admit it to him, but I bring Carlisle along on every decorating trip just to derive some sick pleasure from seeing him out of his element. This flaw in his otherwise perfect cultural sensibility endears me more to him every time I see it in play.

I was drawn from my reverie into the decision before me. Now, did I want the blue-white or the butter-white? I had gone to a store in Seattle for the rest of the house, and the choices there had been overwhelming. The choices here left something to be desired. Carlisle would take me to Seattle in a heartbeat if I asked him, of course, but he was right about one thing: it was just the garage. There was no need to make a long trip over it.

"Can I help you, Ma'am?"

My vampire ears picked up the baritone voice in high-defintion detail as I turned to face its source. A young store clerk, about twenty-five or twenty-six, was standing across the aisle from me. With his carefully groomed hair and confident stance, I sensed trouble from the moment he spoke.

I flashed him my whitest smile, hoping to deter him. "Oh, no thank you. I'm making my decision, now."

The toothy smile wasn't enough to set this child back, apparently, because he crossed the distance between us and came to hover beside me, looking over my shoulder at the paint chips. "So you're looking for white, huh?"

"Yes." If I ignored him, maybe he would go away. I focused on the color samples and turned my shoulder to him, my body language obvious to anyone. I made sure my wedding ring was plainly visible on the farthest paint chip.

"White's a very soothing color." I didn't answer his remark. Maybe he wasn't interested in me, I reasoned. Maybe he was just awkwardly doing his job. Maybe he was socially inept, like I used to be when I was human. "Is this color choice for a...bedroom?" asked the clerk, grossly inappropriate.

Well, there went my kind theories. "No. The garage, actually." I showed my teeth again. "I told my husband I wouldn't go with anything wild, even if it is in a room we never visit." Carlisle wouldn't mind the lie, considering the circumstances.

Wedding rings and husbands did nothing to slow the clerk down. "Oh, I see. Well, you've got some tasteful choices picked out, then."

"Thank you," I answered tersely. I wanted to add that his presence was beginning to make me think that a drive to Seattle wouldn't be so over-the-top. But I refrained, remembering that I needed to act like a civil human housewife, not an irritated vampire woman.

"I'm Andrew, by the way." The clerk turned so that he blocked most of my view, but I could still see past his head. And around his head, I saw Carlisle standing at the end of the aisle, his posture defensive. When Andrew extended his hand to me with a saccharine smile, I saw my husband's eyes narrow.

I diffused my own tension by putting on a delightedly excited face. I leaned sideways, past Andrew's head, and waved at Carlisle. "Oh, honey, come here! I think I found the matching color!"

The appearance of my husband in the flesh took the edge off of Andrew's cockiness, and as he saw Carlisle striding down the aisle, his smile went crooked. No doubt he was absorbing the inhuman beauty of the man coming toward him, who looked to be about four inches taller than him and a thousand times more good-looking. Not to mention, I noticed with a wince, three times more determined to put one little human store clerk in his place.

"That's wonderful, darling," Carlisle said, as if there had been no pause between our sentences. He bestowed upon me the most resplendent smile he was capable of producing, wrapped one arm around my waist and planted one of his chaste kisses on my cheek.

Then he turned to Andrew. I put my hand on his arm, sensing his underlying tension. "Thank you for helping my Esme with her paint choices," Carlisle said, and his smile shifted ever so slightly into something more sinister. No one but another vampire would ever notice. The spot near my heart, which no longer beat, jumped a little in my chest. The way Carlisle had said _My Esme _made me feel a tad faint.

"No trouble," Andrew said stiffly, his pleasant expression now turned into a cardboard cutout.

"Are you ready to go, mon coeur?" Carlisle only pulled out his French when he was excessively happy or excessively put out. I did not need a mind-reader to tell me into which instance this situation was categorized.

"Yes." I tucked my selected paint choice into my purse and patted Carlisle's arm. "But we can have Emmett and Rose get the paint when they come back from school tomorrow. I've just remembered I left the pot roast on at home."

"Then we had better go," Carlisle said, his voice admirably nonchalant as he placed another kiss on my forehead. We were both too accustomed to lying about food preparation to bat an eye at such a falsehood. I sighed with relief at having avoided conflict.

Carlisle was seldom ever jealous-I could only recall a few times in our long marriage where it was him and not me that was turning a shade of green. But when he _was_ jealous, I couldn't but feel concerned for the well-being of the man or boy causing the jealousy. They were merely human, even if they were over-stepping their bounds and coveting another man's wife. Carlisle, however, was not human, and plenty strong enough to deal with a pesky human admirer in any way he seemed fit.

Of course in the end my husband's gentle nature overrode any fit of malice he might feel toward an interloper, no matter how threatened he felt. I was eternally grateful for my mate's innate goodness; the brutal murder of a seemingly harmless clerk in the middle of the hardware store would put a damper on our family's newfound peace in Forks.

But the vampire behind the innate goodness still couldn't resist delivering the parting word to his imaginary foe.

"Oh." As we walked past Andrew, Carlisle turned and handed something to him. It took me a moment to see what it was, and then I nearly snorted with a shocked laugh. "You might want to check those drywall hangings on Aisle Five, _Andrew_," Carlisle said calmly. "I think you must have gotten a bad order."

"Uh..." Andrew stared at the unrecognizable lump of metal and plastic in his hand. "Right. I'll do that...right away..."

We left then, leaving Andrew in his disappointment. Once we were nearly to the front exit, I leaned over and gave my husband a kiss that was decidedly less chaste than the ones he'd given me.

"Mon amour pour toi est éternel," Carlisle whispered, his protective arm drawing me closer.


End file.
